Law enforcement officials have charged 12 people with using absentee ballots to skew an election in Georgia.

“As a result of their grand jury findings, 12 individuals were indicted in that particular matter and we will be trying that case in a court of judicial law instead of a court of public opinion,” District Attorney Joe Mulholland told the local TV station, WALB.

The charges followed a bitter November 2010 school board election in Brooks County in which the final tally was changed by an unusually large wave of absentee ballots.

During the election, 1,060 absentee votes were cast out of the 1,403 ballots mailed out to people who requested them, according to a July 2010 report by WCTV.

That’s far higher than nearby Thomas County, which had 119 absentee votes cast out of 202 requests, and Lowndes County, which had 169 absentee votes cast out of 439 requests, said WCTV’s report.

The 12 people charged are aligned with the Democratic Party.

News of the arrests followed The Daily Caller’s interview with former Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, in which he said voter identification laws are needed to counter ballot fraud in local elections.